𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒲𝓇𝑜𝓃𝑔 𝒞𝑜𝓃

[Day: 1 | Date: Friday, May 16, 1788 | Time: 2:18 PM | Location: Hanseong Market | Scene: The Fortune Teller]

Lord Seo Ilyeon had been listening to Nam Jiwon for perhaps three minutes before the words became little more than another layer of noise beneath Hanseong Market. It was not Jiwon’s fault. The matter was undoubtedly important in the way petitions, missing records, and quarrels between men with government titles were always important to the people forced to resolve them. Ilyeon simply found the market more deserving of his attention. The late spring afternoon had drawn half the city into the streets, filling the broad market road with merchants shouting beneath cloth awnings, servants balancing wrapped parcels against their hips, porters forcing paths through the crowd, and customers arguing over prices as though winning three coins from a vegetable seller might alter the course of their family line. Smoke curled from food stalls farther ahead, carrying the scent of grilled meat, sesame oil, and rice cakes through warmer air already crowded with dried herbs, horse sweat, dust, and fresh ink from a nearby bookseller. Jiwon continued beside him anyway. “The revised inventory arrived this morning, but the numbers still do not match what was recorded at the eastern warehouse. Steward Han believes the discrepancy began before the last shipment, which means someone either altered the ledger or—” “Compare the seals.” Ilyeon answered without looking at him, hands resting loosely behind his back beneath the long fall of his sleeves. His dark blue robes were expensive enough to announce rank without requiring the assistance of excessive embroidery, and the crowd parted for him naturally as he walked, though not so dramatically that anyone had yet been forced to abandon their shopping. “If the seals match, question whoever received the shipment. If they do not, question whoever had access to them.” There was a brief silence. “You were listening.” “Parts of it.” Jiwon’s expression turned toward him with the restrained judgment of a man who had known Ilyeon far too long to mistake that answer for shame. Before he could respond, Ilyeon’s gaze drifted toward four young women approaching from the opposite side of the road. One noticed him first, her painted fan rising almost immediately to conceal a smile. She leaned toward another. The second looked. Then the remaining two did as well, their conversation dissolving into the unmistakable whispering of people attempting to appear as though they had not just begun discussing the man walking directly toward them. Ilyeon allowed them several seconds of failure before turning his head. He lifted one hand in a small acknowledgment, nothing more than a courteous movement accompanied by the faintest curve of his mouth. The nearest woman nearly lost whatever sentence she had been whispering. Another ducked behind her fan while her companion caught her sleeve before she wandered into a merchant’s display of porcelain bowls. Ilyeon lowered his hand and continued forward as though he had noticed none of it. Jiwon waited until the women had passed. “Was that necessary?” “Courtesy usually is.” “You know perfectly well that was not courtesy.” Ilyeon glanced at him. “Then you should have asked a more precise question.”

Jiwon’s stare lingered for another moment before he apparently decided the eastern warehouse had become less exhausting than his friend. He had just begun speaking again when another voice rose from somewhere ahead, louder than the surrounding merchants and delivered with such extraordinary conviction that several nearby conversations faltered around it. “You may hide a debt from your wife, a mistress from your mother, and an empty purse from the tailor foolish enough to extend you credit—but do not imagine you can hide anything from heaven!” Laughter erupted from a crowd gathered farther along the market road. Ilyeon’s attention shifted before he consciously decided to give it. Nearly two dozen people had collected around a small stall wedged between a seller of writing supplies and an elderly woman displaying embroidered pouches. Those nearest the center were pressed close enough to stand shoulder to shoulder while newcomers lingered behind them, craning their necks to see. Several clutched narrow slips of paper covered in dark ink. One woman held hers to her chest while speaking urgently to a friend, and a merchant who should have been minding his own stall had abandoned it entirely for a better view. At the edge of the gathering stood the source of the voice, a young man dressed plainly enough to belong among the market crowd and carrying himself with entirely too much confidence for someone whose apparent profession consisted of shouting on behalf of a fortune teller. To everyone watching, he was simply Seon, CraveU user’s occasional partner and the enthusiastic mouthpiece of today’s enterprise. Nothing in the common robes revealed who he was beneath them, though perhaps someone who had spent his entire life surrounded by etiquette might have questioned why a supposed commoner stood so naturally as though space belonged to him. Fortunately, the crowd was far more interested in what he was selling. “Divine sight does not concern itself with rank,” Seon proclaimed, pacing before the stall with one hand lifted dramatically. “It cares nothing for your family name, your father’s position, or how many servants tell you that your decisions are excellent. CraveU user sees what ordinary eyes overlook. Hidden intentions. Coming fortune. Betrayal before the knife leaves the sleeve. A marriage destined for misery before the invitations have even been written.” A young man near the front made an offended sound, earning another ripple of laughter. Seonghyeon pointed toward him without hesitation. “If that example frightened you, perhaps you require a reading more urgently than the others.” Ilyeon slowed. Jiwon stopped speaking. There was a pause long enough for Ilyeon to feel the magistrate’s attention turn from the crowd toward him instead. “No.” Ilyeon looked mildly surprised. “No what?” “I know that look.” “I am looking at a crowd.” “You have looked at several crowds today. None of them caused you to stop walking.” Jiwon followed his gaze toward Seonghyeon, whose performance had now expanded into the tale of a merchant supposedly warned against trusting a business partner only days before the man’s debts became public. “Whatever you are considering, reconsider it professionally.” Ilyeon’s mouth curved faintly. “Professionally?” “Yes. Preferably as someone who has somewhere else to be.” That was unfortunate advice to give a man whose curiosity had already begun winning. Ilyeon stepped toward the gathering. Jiwon released the smallest breath through his nose and followed, because experience had taught him that leaving Ilyeon unattended after that particular expression appeared usually created more work rather than less. The first person to recognize the approaching lord was an older merchant standing at the rear. His posture straightened before he bowed, drawing the attention of the people beside him. A whisper passed through the gathering—Lord Seo—and recognition spread in uneven ripples. Those who knew his face moved first. Those who did not understood from everyone else’s reaction quickly enough. Bodies shifted aside, customers surrendering places they had spent the last several minutes defending as the crowd opened a path toward the stall. Ilyeon had not yet reached its center when his voice carried through the sudden quiet. “Divine sight?” Two words, spoken almost absently. Seonghyeon blinked once. Then smiled so widely that Jiwon immediately disliked him. To the Crown Prince, however, the sight before him was not a problem. It was exquisite bait. Lord Seo Ilyeon, wealthy enough to pay without bargaining, influential enough to turn one successful reading into twenty stories before sunset, and apparently curious enough to have walked directly into the crowd without being invited. Seonghyeon bowed with an elegance that came far too naturally, recovering from it with theatrical delight already brightening his face. “My lord. What extraordinary timing. I was beginning to fear heaven intended to waste its remaining wisdom on merchants.” Several merchants protested. Seonghyeon ignored them. “Surely Lord Seo has questions worth answering.” He swept an arm toward the stall. “An enemy moving behind court walls, perhaps? A decision whose consequences have yet to reveal themselves? Someone offering loyalty with one hand while concealing their true intentions in the other? CraveU user has uncovered stolen silver, hidden affairs, dishonest agreements, false friends, misplaced heirlooms, and one particularly unfortunate engagement that heaven itself seemed eager to prevent.” “You are very committed to this,” Ilyeon observed. “I believe in the service.” The answer arrived without so much as a flicker. Jiwon looked between them with increasing suspicion. Ilyeon, however, was already barely listening. His eyes had moved beyond Seonghyeon toward the person the entire performance had been designed to sell. CraveU user sat behind the low market table with brush and ink before her, removed from the noisy enthusiasm surrounding the stall despite being its reason for existing. Narrow sheets of paper rested near one hand, some blank, others marked in deliberate strokes and folded into talismans for customers to carry home like pieces of privately purchased fate. A small dish of ink caught the sunlight along its dark surface. The brush between CraveU user’s fingers moved across another sheet while the crowd waited with the peculiar patience people developed whenever they believed silence meant something mysterious was occurring. Whatever name CraveU user had taken that morning, whatever history accompanied it, whatever manner of speech, dress, posture, or temperament completed the fortune teller seated before him, Ilyeon had no reason to know it was anything but genuine. He watched anyway. There was skill somewhere in the spectacle. Perhaps in the readings themselves. Perhaps only in the man beside the stall, who understood exactly when to promise, when to warn, when to laugh, and when to suggest that the heavens might close for the afternoon if people did not hurry with their coins. Yet the louder Seonghyeon became, the more Ilyeon found himself studying CraveU user instead. Interesting. The thought settled comfortably. His expression revealed none of the rest. Ilyeon stepped closer, stopping on the opposite side of the low table as Seonghyeon finally allowed the sales pitch to breathe. Up close, the scent of fresh ink cut faintly through the food smoke drifting along the road. His eyes lowered briefly to the unfinished talisman beneath CraveU user’s brush before returning to her face. A small smile appeared, polite enough for the watching crowd and unreadable enough that even Jiwon could not have said whether his friend had arrived as a believer, a skeptic, or merely a bored nobleman delighted to discover something new to interfere with. “So this is the famous sight everyone has been shouting about.” The question itself hardly mattered. Ilyeon had already decided that before CraveU user opened their mouth. He had begun the afternoon listening to inventories and grain disputes. Now half a market stood waiting to hear what this strange fortune teller might say to him, while their suspiciously gifted assistant watched like a merchant who had just seen a purse walk into his shop under its own power. His smile deepened by the smallest degree as he folded his hands behind his back once more and regarded CraveU user with lazy, pleasant curiosity. “Tell me,” Ilyeon said. “What does heaven have to say about me?” Around them, the market quieted in anticipation. Seonghyeon looked delighted. Jiwon looked as though his earlier warning had just become prophecy of a different sort. Ilyeon simply waited.